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Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

psychiatrymargins.com

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Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#251

Post by petra »

Throwaway42754 wrote: post #21

I have schizoaffective disorder, induced by a bad trip from marijuana. It was like the 3rd time I had tried weed, and I naively took too much. For me psychosis feels like pattern matching going on extreme overdrive, while at the same time memory goes to shit. It's truly an awful illness, and what's worse is that the current medical treatments are bad. I've been fortunate enough where I can get by on a low dose olanza…

Interesting link, thank you!.

One other possible immune system link is the relationahip between the parasite toximoplasis gondii to schizophrenia.

If I'm not mistaken that's the paper about that:

https://dbc.wroc.pl/Content/39095/PDF/1031.pdf

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#252

Post by heavyset_go »

overu589 wrote: post #217
lucidrains wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you are a man and make it past age of 29 without starting to hear voices, you can breathe a sigh of relief (I did)

I started hearing the voices well after 30. First it began with gang stalking, and by coincidence I am from the “home town” of Americas thought control elite. I was “recruited” (press ganged) and it is only a determination not to accept a word these say that keeps me unconcerned with the collapse of the lie that is modernity in my life.

I just want to point out that psychosis and schizophrenia tend to get worse over time, so while you might have a handle on it now, without treatment you might not in the future. They also have much better prognoses with treatment, even complete remission.

I've watched several people go from having a grip on reality, thinking they don't need treatment, to absolutely losing their minds. It's tragic and I hate to see it happen.

Point is moments of lucidity should be seized upon, I say this as someone who briefly experienced psychosis after extreme sleep deprivation. It was fucking terrifying and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#253

Post by heavyset_go »

amarait wrote: post #197
lucidrains wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you are a man and make it past age of 29 without starting to hear voices, you can breathe a sigh of relief (I did)

We dont even know what constitutes a mental voice. Hell, a huge percentage of people cant hear their own voices in their heads

During psychosis there is no question about what you hear. You hear it. You may know it isn't real, but you hear it.

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#254

Post by tempestn »

This is fascinating, and makes me wonder if human intelligence itself is such a cliff edge trait. For most of human history our advanced intelligence has obviously been a benefit, but now we see, as people and societies become wealthier and better educated (both correlated with intelligence), their reproduction rates drop precipitously. Perhaps we've overshot the intelligence cliff and evolution is now gradually pulling us back. (Evidence of this would be less intelligent people having more children on average than more intelligent ones.)

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#255

Post by cjbgkagh »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #233
cjbgkagh wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small percentage of people, like myself, have clearly autosomal genetic conditions that means being 'normal' is just not on the cards. I have to take psychopharmacological drugs just to get close to normal. Not everyone is the same, there is a lot of variety, what you say could indeed be true for most people but can also not be true for a small minority of people.

> A small percentage of people, like myself, have clearly autosomal genetic conditions What is the Autosomal dominant disordered gene polymorphism you have that causes your mental illness? I am assuming you are just guessing here? > I have to take psychopharmacological drugs just to get close to normal. I hope you can consider that you are taking drugs to manage being in an environment/diet that you are not genetical…

hEDS, there is a very long list of comorbidities and I tick off most of them. Not guessing, runs in the family, did a WGS and found the TNXB SNPs responsible.

I tried the no-drugs and being super healthy approach for the vast majority of my life, I look like a pro-athlete, the only reason I started the meds was due to figuring out the statistical possibility of having X things wrong with me was next to impossible without a common cause, and the ME/CFS with brain fog was destroying my life.

I also tried to quit caffeine but that only resulted in very negative effects that persisted for more than 4 months after going cold turkey, that's 4 months being largely housebound and not able to work for that one experiment. I've been at this so long that if you can think of something I've probably tried it - including the healthiest of healthy lifestyles.

Just comparing within my own family most are anti-drugs and anti-medications and their health is an absolute mess. I wish living a healthy lifestyle would be sufficient, I wouldn't have to walk a tightrope of balancing meds, but I don't get that option.

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#256

Post by giantg2 »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #179
giantg2 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Was anyone ever under such an impression?" If you've ever listened to some of people pushing or debating psychedelics, or natural remedies, or even "totally safe" vaccines, then it should be readily apparent.

Vaccines are a bit of a different can of worms in that first generally, they’re well-studied and the risks are reasonably well known, and second the impact isn’t solely personal — you’re trading off in most cases a small risk for the betterment of society — maintaining herd immunity, reducing capacity for spreading, etc depending on vaccine. The lives of many others can be negatively impacted, in some cases fatally,…

The context of this thread is that anything that is a medication has some sort of side effect and that some people overlook that. This is just as true for vaccines as for mushrooms. Cost benefit analysis is completely different.

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#257

Post by ryanjshaw »

absurdo wrote: post #240
suzzer99 wrote: post #9

I've lost one of my best friends to what I think is schizophrenia. We don't know because she's cut off all contact with friends and family and refuses to see a doctor. It's definitely psychosis. She thinks she's in some kind of Truman show that she calls "the game". Since none of her friends or family are willing to admit to it, then we must be in on it. We don't know her full family medical history because her dad w…

[flagged]

Plenty of intelligent people entertain this possibility, as well as many other possibilities, around how our world works.

If they then become obsessed with the idea being a fact and refuse to even consider updating their mental model when presented with evidence contradicting it then they have developed a fixed belief.

When that fixed belief is not common among their culture, it becomes a bizarre fixed belief.

When, as a result of their obsession with those bizarre fixed beliefs, they are unable to function (hygiene, nutrition, finances, care of their dependents, etc.) - then there’s a problem.

Or do you think a mind is a perfect thing that can never be ill?

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#258

Post by mwigdahl »

financltravsty wrote: post #201
gknapp wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And no, please spare us all your justifications for how caffeine is fine or micro-dosing has been amazing, because they are simply varying levels of rationalization, I do it too, I’m just not in it as deeply. And no, just because you were able to become rich with and on the back of drugs does not mean you did it without harm, you likely just scandalized a lot of harm to, e.g., get rich selling some service to some…

I hate to write out these words, but you're strawmanning. The point is caffeine etc. corrupt the mind and cause a person's mental faculties to run in a way they were not initially designed to. The point is not that these drugs are all extremely harmful, only that they are all harmful. Caffeine and other things get a pass because the "hard drugs" are so uniquely and visibly harmful that they overshadow all other forms…

The use of the term "corrupt" rather than "alter" or "affect" is assuming the conclusion here. The human mind is not something that always works in the same Platonic perfection in a state of nature. Biological and cultural differences are major factors in what is considered normal at any given place and time.

Some people have conditions that make the way their brains work different than what is considered normal. Western technological culture imposes differences in social interaction and pressures on thinking and required performance that are far different than existed in societies even mere hundreds of years before.

Drugs can be a way to compensate for these pressures and find a way to exist in the world with as much equanimity as possible. And I say all this as a person who avoids all caffeine and illegal drugs, and uses alcohol very infrequently. I'm lucky I can do this and thrive in today's Western culture. Not everyone is as fortunate.

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#259

Post by lucidrains »

heavyset_go wrote: post #247
lucidrains wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you are a man and make it past age of 29 without starting to hear voices, you can breathe a sigh of relief (I did)

Unfortunately, this is just statistics. There are cases that lie outside of that age range. I know of two cases, personally. Things like stress, drugs, childbirth, significant life changes, etc can trigger psychosis and latent schizophrenia at any age, it's just statistically more likely to happen during adolescence and the period right after. Another way to look at this is that adolescence is when someone experience…

indeed, it just becomes less likely

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#260

Post by lucidrains »

overu589 wrote: post #217
lucidrains wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you are a man and make it past age of 29 without starting to hear voices, you can breathe a sigh of relief (I did)

I started hearing the voices well after 30. First it began with gang stalking, and by coincidence I am from the “home town” of Americas thought control elite. I was “recruited” (press ganged) and it is only a determination not to accept a word these say that keeps me unconcerned with the collapse of the lie that is modernity in my life.

I am sorry to hear that.
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